I’ve been a little sidetracked with my writing so haven’t had a chance to post anything on this blog. My new serial novel, His to Command, came out in January and Northern Heat, an anthology of short stories from Canadian authors will be released on Valentine’s Day. On Februrary 16th, my next novel, Illicit, will be released. It’s been a busy time.

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I wanted to do some Valentine’s Day manicures. Today, I’m showing you Spring Romance by Nicole over a black base. I picked this bottle up in October when I was at a conference in New Jersey. I had been anxiously anticipating my trip for many reasons, but one was to visit the store Five Below. I’m from Canada and we don’t have those stores here, but I had seen some beautiful polishes from a brand called Funky Fingers. I picked up a few of those while in NJ, but there also had some Nicole polishes. I don’t usually go for the ones with hearts and stars, but I thought why not give it a try? They had a few Nicole’s with shaped glitter.

Recently, I saw a couple of reviews of Spring Romance and the reviewers weren’t impressed. They said it was difficult to pick up the hearts on the brush and the polish was gloppy. Maybe because I went in aware of the potential problems, I didn’t find it too bad. It’s true that not many hearts came out on the brush, so I brushed on the polish, then dipped a toothpick into the bottle to pick up the hearts then applied them where I wanted them. It worked really well. Also, I found the lovely turquoise background glitter and the hearts really popped on the black background. In the reviews I saw, they applied them on light pink polish.

In the picture, above you can really see how the hearts catch the light.

The black base was Black on Black by Sinful Colors.

I found that it was a good idea to put a topcoat on the black before applying Spring Romance, because I found that pushing the hearts around to position them, started to remove the nail polish below, leaving bare patches. I put my Seche Vite topcoat on the other nails and this prevented the problem.

Here’s one more picture. I take a lot of my pictures in front of my orchid plant and to my surprise (because I’m not great with plants), it started to bloom about a month ago. It’s so pretty!

I’m way behind on haul posts. I was already behind before Christmas, then I got a lot of nail polish for Christmas, and I bought some since, too, so I think I’ll give up for now and just update my stash number and move on. (Not today. I still have to update my stash spreadsheet.) I can’t believe how many polishes I have now! I will probably share some of the more exotic ones with you, though, like the ones I got from Korea and Brazil. Also, I bought two Ciaté caviar sets to celebrate how well my serial novel is doing. I hope to post some pictures of my caviar nails after I try them. (They haven’t arrived yet.)

My son and my assistant will be handling the booth most of the time, and all the books there will be signed, but I will be spending a few hours each day at the show personally autographing books. Tentatively, I’ll be there from 9 pm to midnight on Friday, 8 pm to midnight on Saturday, and 3-5 pm Sunday. I’m not sure about Thursday yet.